Tent London 2011: Truly multi-functional furniture

For that last few years I’ve noticed a definite trend – what appears at Tent London, the cutting edge trade design show held at the Truman Brewery each September, usually appears everywhere else fairly rapidly pretty soon afterwards. With living spaces getting smaller and wallets getting slimmer, it was perhaps inevitable that furniture and design embraced multi-functionalism in a more radical way than just a stool which can also be a side table. For me what was most interesting was the fact that many of the designs incorporated an element of the educational, the abacus child’s chair, a library you can curl up in, counting, reading, learning….be interesting to see what turns up on the high street in a few years.